Safe Harbour
by Athena Alexandria
Summary: AU. Prequel to Shelter. Andrea is home where she belongs, but can she and Rick let go of their demons when one of them is still out there?
1. Chapter 1

_The general consensus was that you guys want a season four AU set at the prison so here it is. I've decided to tie it in with Shelter, to tell the story of how Rick and Andrea moved past their respective issues and got together._

* * *

Chapter 1.

She was unconscious when they found her, curled on the floor, a pair of bloody pliers clutched in her hand. There was blood on her clothes, her skin, pooling on the concrete beneath her… Though whether it belonged to her or the dead walker beside her was anyone's guess.

Rick kept his gun trained on her forehead while he crouched beside her, pressing his fingers into the hollow beneath her jaw. Her pulse was thready, but persistent, although something told him that it wouldn't be for much longer if they didn't do something fast.

"Is she…?" Michonne asked, her voice soft and fearful, looking visibly shaken for the first time since Rick had met her.

"She's alive," he assured her. To Daryl, he added: "We need to get her to Hershel. He'll know what to do."

"You sure it's a good idea to bring her back to the prison?" Daryl asked him, eying Andrea's motionless form warily, as though he half expected her to rise up and attack them. "What if she's been bit?"

Michonne shoved past Rick impatiently, unceremoniously tearing open Andrea's vest.

The three men – including Tyreese, who had been watching silently from outside the door – averted their eyes as she began shoving aside her friend's clothing, examining her body for the damning teeth marks.

"She hasn't," she announced finally, letting Andrea's shirt fall back over the pale, unblemished skin of her stomach. "Most of this blood isn't hers."

Rick's gaze wandered from Andrea back to the still walker. The evidence suggested that she had managed to hold it off long enough to stab it through the eye with the pliers before passing out herself.

Must've been one hell of a fight, he thought.

But then the Andrea he knew was a scrapper. It was one of the things he had always admired about her.

"If she ain't bit, then what're we waiting for?" Daryl asked, calling Rick's mind back to the present. "Let's get her the hell out of this shithole."

Daryl ducked back out into the hall, returning a moment later with a weathered tarp like the kind usually found on construction sites. He and Rick shifted Andrea onto it, the four of them each taking one corner so that it formed a kind of makeshift stretcher.

When they reached the car, Rick and Michonne stepped back, allowing Daryl and Tyreese to transfer Andrea into backseat.

Michonne climbed in after her, cradling her head in her lap with a tenderness that surprised Rick. It was clear from her actions that she cared deeply for Andrea. He just hoped that it wasn't too late for them to mend whatever rift had caused them to turn their backs on each other.

"I'll drive," he offered, closing the door and walking around to the front of the vehicle.

It was true that he wanted to check on Carl and Judith, but there was also a part of him that felt it was his duty to make sure Andrea got to safety. After all, he was the one who had cast her out of his little kingdom without a second thought. He knew what the Governor was and he'd sent her back to him. Twice.

In his old life, he'd sworn an oath to protect women from situations like hers. She wasn't exactly an innocent, but she wasn't a dictator like the Governor, or a killer like Rick; if she died now, murdered at the hands of her psychotic boyfriend, Rick would have to live with the knowledge that he hadn't done anything to prevent it for the rest of his days.

"There's no telling if or when the Governor will come back here," he reminded Daryl. "I need you to stay here and help Tyreese round up everyone who's left and try to convince them to come with you to the prison. Let them know our door is open to anyone who's willing to defect. Tell them that as of now, we're calling an armistice."

"You got it, Hoss," Daryl agreed, and confident that he had the situation well in hand, Rick slid behind the wheel and started up the engine.

* * *

Back at the prison, Glenn and Maggie came down, still dressed in their riot gear, to open the gates for them. When Rick filled them in on what had happened at Woodbury, they ran ahead to warn Hershel while he brought the car up to the main building.

Rick didn't bother with a stretcher this time, lifting Andrea out of the backseat and carrying her into the cellblock himself.

By the time he got her to Hershel's cell, the old veterinarian had all of his medical supplies laid out on the desk ready.

"She's been like this since we found her," Rick explained, lowering Andrea onto the cot. "All we know is that she wasn't bitten."

He faded back into the doorway with Michonne while Hershel checked Andrea's vitals, recording them in a small notebook he took from his breast pocket.

Her already pallid face had taken on a greyish hue since they had rescued her from what Rick could only describe as the Governor's torture chamber.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked anxiously.

She was going to be all right. She had to be. She fought too hard to overcome the loss of her sister, to _survive_ just to die on them now.

Hershel dabbed at Andrea's hairline with a wet rag, wiping the dried blood from her forehead so that he could examine the injury underneath.

Rick watched the water turn a murky pink as he dipped it back into the bowl.

"From the looks of this head wound, I'd say she has a concussion. My guess is that someone was trying to knock her out and keep her out."

That's how he got her into that room, Rick realised, a sick feeling creeping into the pit of his stomach.

When she figured out what that monster had planned for her, she would have struggled; in order to subdue her, he would have to hit her hard enough to make her black out. And if she happened to come to before they got to where they were going… A man like that, he would have no qualms about slugging her again.

"Those bruises are too dark to be fresh," Michonne pointed out. "And the walker we found couldn't have been killed more than a few hours ago. That means she was awake today."

"This wasn't just caused by a concussion," Hershel agreed. "She's also suffering the effects of dehydration, starvation, infection… Her body is in shock."

"Infection?" Rick repeated, wondering if the old man had uncovered something Michonne had missed.

Hershel lifted Andrea's wrist, still encircled by the remains of a bloody metal handcuff like a macabre bracelet. The places where the cuff bit into her skin were marked with painful-looking abrasions, rubbed raw by her attempts to free herself.

"See how inflamed these wounds are?" he explained.

Rick let out the breath he was holding. So she hadn't been bitten.

The old man glanced from him to Michonne and back again. "Where did you say you found her?"

"She was locked up in the same building where they kept Glenn and Maggie," Rick told him. "It looked like she'd been handcuffed to a chair."

"You forgot to mention the walker," Michonne said, her eyes burning with cold fury. "He wasn't just holding her prisoner – he was trying to kill her."

"You don't think he succeeded, do you?" Rick asked Hershel.

He tried to imagine what might very well have been Andrea's final days, locked up, starved, and beaten like some kind of animal. Nobody deserved to die like that, especially not a woman whose biggest crime was falling in love with the wrong guy.

"She's in a bad way," Hershel agreed, "but Andrea's a fighter. She's going to need a little help, though."

"What can we do?" Michonne asked him.

"She needs water. The problem is, the only way I can give it to her while she's unconscious like this is through an IV."

"I bet there's one in the infirmary," Rick told him.

From what he'd seen, it seemed to be pretty well stocked. If they'd had access to all those supplies when Judith was born, that day might have ended differently.

What was past was past, though. Rick couldn't turn back the clock, any more than he could sprout wings and fly. It was too late to do anything for Lori now, but today, with Andrea, they still had some time.

"Bring it to me," Hershel said, "and we just might have a shot at saving her life."


	2. Chapter 2

_Some people have been asking if I'm going to tie this fic in with season 4..._

_To be honest, there's a lot about this season that I haven't liked. __For example, I wasn't a huge fan of the flu story line, which felt like a lazy way to thin the herd by killing off a bunch of Woodbury Red Shirts. And don't even get me started on Carol's arc. There are a couple of things that I definitely want to include, though, __like the Governor's assault on the prison, but it won't necessarily happen when or how it did on the show. So basically, I will be remixing the remix (and drawing from the comics) to tell my own story._

* * *

Chapter 2.

"Any change?" Rick asked, walking into Hershel's cell with Judith.

It was morning, but it felt like an extension of the day before. The elderly veterinarian was gone, presumably to lie down on one of the empty bunks – not that there were many of those anymore –, but Michonne was still there at Andrea's bedside, keeping vigil over her friend.

It was hard to tell if the IV was having any effect; some of the colour had returned to Andrea's cheeks, but she still looked as listless as ever.

"Her fever peaked a while ago," Michonne told him without looking up. "She got pretty delirious. Kept saying things like, 'I just didn't want anyone to die'."

"Talking is a good sign, though, right?" Rick asked her. "It means she's starting to come to?"

"I don't know," Michonne admitted. "Could be. Could also be that her brain is shutting down." Her tone was impassive, but Rick could see the agony in her dark eyes.

In his own mind, he grappling with the same morose thought. What if it was all for nothing?

Too little, too late.

That might as well become his creed. First Dale, then Shane, and Lori… and now Andrea. Ever since this accursed apocalypse started he was always just a little too late.

"You've been sitting with her for hours," he pointed out gently, forcing himself to focus on Michonne, who was still within the realm of his help. "Why don't you go get some rest? Judy and I can take the next shift."

Michonne remained seated, shaking her head stubbornly. "I'm not tired," she argued, but the weariness in her expression betrayed her lie.

Rick felt as worn out as she looked, but before he could even begin to contemplate closing his eyes for a well-earned nap, his daughter had woken from hers, howling for his attention.

"I'm gonna be up for a while anyway," he insisted, showing Michonne the bottle he was carrying at his side. "At least one of us should get some sleep."

Michonne studied him wordlessly for a long moment.

He wondered what she was thinking. She was so hard to read.

Anyone could see that she loved Andrea like a sister, and yet Rick struggled to imagine the two of them interacting. The Michonne he knew was all steel and hard edges, impenetrable; Andrea, meanwhile, despite her bravado, was all softness, easily hurt and painfully fallible.

Maybe that was it, he thought. Maybe Michonne felt the same conflicting urges to shake and protect her that he had ever since he'd encountered her in that department store back in Atlanta.

His first impression of Andrea had been that of a little girl playing dress up with her daddy's gun. She'd wanted so badly to show the world that she could be tough, to conceal the fragile heart that he'd seen almost decimated by the death of her sister.

It pained him to think now that that heart – the same one that had prompted her to swallow her pride and apologise for a threat she'd never intended to carry out – was the reason she was lying here in this bed. If only she really were the stone cold killer she'd professed herself to be.

Michonne broke the stalemate by rising from her chair. "Thank you," she agreed stiffly, offering him what almost passed for a smile.

He watched as she cast one last concerned glance at the unconscious woman on the bed, before striding out of the cell, leaving them alone.

When she was gone, he eased himself into the chair that she had just vacated, carefully repositioning Judith so that her head was resting against his bicep.

"Bon appetit," he said, sliding the teat between her tiny rosebud lips.

Once she had latched onto the bottle, sucking contentedly, he shifted his attention back to Andrea.

"After I got shot, when I was in my coma, people used to talk to me," he told her. "I don't remember the words, exactly, but I think it helped, just knowing that they were there."

Her eyes were still closed. Her searched her face for a hint that she was listening, but her only response was a faint, almost imperceptible moan, which he decided to take as a sign that he should continue.

"I'm not sure if you can hear me – maybe you're too far gone for that – , but I just wanted you to know that you did it. Those women and children – all those people – , they're safe now because of you."

He kept talking, explaining to her that a bus, driven by Tyreese, and carrying the last denizens of Woodbury, had arrived at sunrise. Since then, he and the others had been busy assigning cells and meting out rations. They'd smuggled out everything they could, including some of the town's livestock, but they would still need to organise a supply run for some time in the not too distant future just to keep up with demand.

Even so, watching the two groups commingle with all of the pride of a father on his child's first day of school, Rick thought he finally understood what Andrea had been fighting for all this time. Here were the stirrings not just of a larger group, but a community. A new beginning, for all of them.

He just hoped that she would still be around to see it.

The longer she stayed asleep, though, the less chance there was of happening.

Come on, Andrea, he thought. You didn't cheat death this long just to let something like this beat you.

A woman like her, who was brave enough to take down a herd on her own, deserved a better end than this.

Then again, he could say the same for most of the people they'd lost.

* * *

It wasn't until some hours later, when Rick was on the verge of nodding off himself, that Andrea finally started awake, expelling an audible gasp.

Before he could fully register what was happening, she had bolted upright; his first thought was that she was a walker now, but then he saw her eyes, the same striking shade of sea green as always, only at that moment, they were darting around her with the panicked expression of a wild animal that had woken to find itself trapped in a cage.

"It's okay, Andrea," he told her, trying his best to placate her before she hurt herself, or him. "You're safe. You're at the prison."

He kept his voice low to avoid waking the baby, who was sleeping in her basket at his feet.

Andrea's gaze landed on him, and she stared at him as though she had never seen him before. "Rick? Is this…? Am I dreaming?"

The fear in her voice broke his heart. How many times had she dreamt of someone coming to save her, only to wake up in that room, in that chair?

"This is really happening," he assured her gruffly, his own voice thick with emotion. "Daryl, Michonne and I went to Woodbury looking to hunt down the Governor. That's when we found you. You were unconscious, damn near dead."

He hesitated as he tried to figure out how to phrase the next part, wanting to be delicate with her, but lacking the patience for it.

"What happened, Andrea? How did you get there? What did he do to you?"

She brushed his questions aside in favour of one of her own. "Did you get him?" she asked quietly. "Philip… The Governor… Is he dead?"

A wave of dizziness seemed to crash over her, and she cradled her head in her hand, sinking back against the pillows.

She was still weak; Rick was tempted to lie to her so that she could finish her recovery in peace, but she was going to find out the truth eventually. Better that she be prepared, should the Governor ever resurface, and something told him that he would.

"He wasn't there," he admitted. "According to Karen, he had some kind of psychotic break and took off. No one's seen him since."

The hope drained from her expression and she looked like she might burst into tears.

"He's insane, Rick. He stabbed Milton right in front of me, just to prove a point. What kind of person does something that?"

She lost the battle then, sobbing silently into her palm.

Milton. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Rick figured he must have been the walker the Governor had tried to use to murder her.

Judging by her grief, he was also someone she'd cared about, someone she'd considered a friend.

Rick reached across the space between them for her free hand, squeezing it gently in one of his.

"Hey. I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but it's gonna be okay," he told her. Deep down he knew that they were just words, but as inadequate as they were, they were all he had to comfort her with. "You're safe here. You're with us now. We're not gonna let him hurt you again."


End file.
